Estimation of food demand in Turkey: method of an almost ideal demand system

In this study, data of the household income and consumption expenditure surveys conducted by the Turkish Statistical Institute for 1994 and 2003 years were used; income, price, and cross price elasticities under six aggregated product groups were estimated within the framework of the an almost ideal demand system approach for food expenditures; and estimation of household consumers’ food demand in Turkey was analyzed. According to the findings obtained, it was established that a price-bound change would appear in the food demand, and elasticities were calculated. Expenditures by product groups and price elasticities were obtained, and the product groups were aggregated as bread and cereals; meat, fish, and poultry; milk and dairy products, oil and egg; vegetables and fruits; various fast food and alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.     

Time‐varying intercepts and equilibrium analysis: an extension of the dynamic almost ideal demand model

Demographic effects and user costs in demand systems have usually been modelled explicitly. A more robust approach is a state space formulation of the demand system, where time‐varying intercepts account for the effects of unobservable variables. The author embeds such a system in a vector autoregressive distributed lag model, with a Bayesian hierarchical prior. The model is estimated by a Markov chain Monte Carlo method on samples involving quarterly US and UK data. In the US case, the results are compared with a previously published cointegration analysis of the same data. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rotterdam model versus almost ideal demand system: will the best specification please stand up?

The Rotterdam model and the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) are often applied in consumer demand systems modeling. Using Monte Carlo techniques, we determine which model performs best in recovering the true elasticities of demand. The AIDS model is usually used in linearized form. Since the Rotterdam model is also linear in a very similar form, comparison of the Rotterdam model and the AIDS model has been the subject of much speculation in the literature. We not only compare the linearized AIDS model with the Rotterdam model, but also with the full nonlinear AIDS. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Estimation of a continuous-time dynamic demand system

A continuous-time dynamic model of consumers' demand, explicitly taking account of the roles of depreciation, interest rates, habits, and stocks, is estimated using recently developed techniques from discrete quarterly UK data on three broad commodity groupings. The results suggest that, whilst being a significant determinant of demand, the actual magnitude of the influence of changes in interest rates may be relatively small in the long run. The cross-price effects of durable goods are also found to be statistically significant, and symmetry of long-run compensated price responses is not rejected.     

Business and consumer expectations and macroeconomic forecasts

Business and consumer surveys have become an essential tool for gathering information about different economic variables. While the fast availability of the results and the wide range of variables covered have made them very useful for monitoring the current state of the economy, there is no consensus on their usefulness for forecasting macroeconomic developments.The objective of this paper is to analyse the possibility of improving forecasts for selected macroeconomic variables for the euro area using the information provided by these surveys. After analyzing the potential presence of seasonality and the issue of quantification, we tested whether these indicators provide useful information for improving forecasts of the macroeconomic variables. With this aim, different sets of models have been considered (AR, ARIMA, SETAR, Markov switching regime models and VAR) to obtain forecasts for the selected macroeconomic variables. Then, information from surveys has been considered for forecasting these variables in the context of the following models: autoregressive, VAR, Markov switching regime and leading indicator models. In all cases, the root mean square error (RMSE) has been computed for different forecast horizons.The comparison of the forecasting performance of the two sets of models permits us to conclude that, in most cases, models that include information from the surveys have lower RMSEs than the best model without survey information. However, this reduction is only significant in a limited number of cases. In this sense, the results obtained extend the results of previous research that has included information from business and consumer surveys to explain the behaviour of macroeconomic variables, but are not conclusive about its role.     

A comment on consumer demand systems with binding non-negativity constraints

Wales and Woodland (1983) have proposed an econometric model to deal with non-negativity constraints in systems of demand equations. This paper points out the relationship between the Wales-Woodland model and the simultaneous equation/limited dependent variable model of Amemiya (1974). This relationship is important because Amemiya has proposed a simple estimation procedure that can be utilized for some cases of the Wales-Woodland model. The issue of internal consistency (or coherency) for models of this type is discussed. I show that internal consistency for the Wales-Woodland model is equivalent to the second-order condition for systems of demand equations without binding quantity constraints.     

Accidents airline safety perceptions and consumer demand

This paper assesses the impact of perceptions about the safety level of airlines on enplanement. Consumer perceptions are specified with a Poisson distribution that updates over time. Using two different empirical specifications via a pooled generalized least squares procedure with fixed effects; we find no statistical evidence of a correlation between the perceived level of safety and enplanement. However, under an alternative specification in which the severity levels of accidents are ranked, we find that safety perceptions about accidents with minor injuries have no statistically significant impact on enplanement, while perceptions about accidents with serious injuries and fatalities lead to cumulative decreases in enplanement.     

A rational rank four demand system

Past parametric tests of demand system rank employed polynomial Engel curve systems. However, by Gorman's ( 1981 ) theorem, the maximum possible rank of a utility‐derived polynomial demand system is three. The present paper proposes a class of demand systems that are utility derived, are close to polynomial, and have rank four. These systems nest rational polynomial demands, and so can be used to test ranks up to four. These systems are suitable for applications where high rank is likely, such as demand systems involving a large number of goods. A test of rank using this new class of systems is applied to UK consumer demand data. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Semiparametric estimation of consumer demand systems in real expenditure

Microdata concerning consumer demand typically show considerable variation in real expenditures, but very little variation in prices. We propose a semiparametric strategy for the consumer demand problem in which expenditure share equations are estimated nonparametrically in the real expenditure direction and estimated parametrically (with fixed or varying coefficients) in price directions. In our model, Engel curves are unrestricted: demands may have any rank. Because the demand model is derived from a cost function, it may be restricted to satisfy integrability and used for consumer surplus calculations. Since real expenditure is unobserved, but rather estimated under the model, we face a semiparametric model with a nonparametrically generated regressor. We show efficient convergence rates for parametric and nonparametric components. We illustrate the feasibility of our proposed strategy using Canadian expenditure and price data: Engel curves display curvature which cannot be encompassed by standard parametric models. We also find that the rationality restriction of Slutsky symmetry is rejected in the fixed‐coefficients model, but not in the varying‐coefficients model. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A dynamic model for disaster response considering prioritized demand points

This paper addresses the problem of distributing relief supplies after the occurrence of a disaster. We develop a dynamic model to serve demand, while prioritizing the response, according to the level of urgency of demand points. Our model is thought to be applied during a planning horizon and it considers dynamic demand, capacity constraints and priorities. To evaluate the applicability of our model, we use a real case study of a flood occurred in Colombia. We also test the computational solvability of our model and we propose and test different solution methodologies for solving larger instances of our problem.     

Specification and estimation of dynamic demand systems incorporating polynomial price response functions: An application to U.S. clothing imports

Numerous recent empirical demand studies utilize the habit formation and state variable approaches to describe dynamic demand behavior. In this paper, we suggest the introduction of polynomial price response functions as an alternative method of generating dynamic conditional demand systems. This approach allows direct estimation of the degree of price substitutability among products and the timing of price effects. The application presented here involves the estimation of dynamic CES and indirect additive translog demand systems for U.S. clothing imports. The estimated price response lag structures and matrices of long-run price elasticities are presented and analyzed. Also, the precision of the non-parametric price elasticity estimates is evaluated by computing approximate asymptotic standard errors.     

A dynamic von Thünen model with a demand function

This paper examines the dynamic processes of agricultural land use in the context of the von Thünen model. Consumers purchase agricultural goods to maximize their utility levels; farmers plant agricultural goods only once in a year and they decide their land use according to the last year's prices. In this context, it is first shown that land use is generally unstable for a broad class of utility functions, although the equilibrium land use is achieved in a very specific case. Second, it is shown that under a certain condition, land use changes cyclically with 2-year intervals.     

A neural network demand system with heteroskedastic errors

In this paper we consider estimation of demand systems with flexible functional forms, allowing an error term with a general conditional heteroskedasticity function that depends on observed covariates, such as demographic variables. We propose a general model that can be estimated either by quasi-maximum likelihood (in the case of exogenous regressors) or generalized method of moments (GMM) if the covariates are endogenous. The specification proposed in the paper nests several demand functions in the literature and the results can be applied to the recently proposed Exact Affine Stone Index (EASI) demand system of [Lewbel, A., Pendakur, K., 2008. Tricks with Hicks: The EASI implicit Marshallian demand system for unobserved heterogeneity and flexible Engel curves. American Economic Review (in press)]. Furthermore, flexible nonlinear expenditure elasticities can be estimated.     

Sustainability concerns in luxury supply chains: European brand strategies and French consumer expectations

Sustainability in supply chain management has become a concern in both research and practice. Although consumption and purchasing have been significantly explored in the luxury sector, a gap in supply chain studies is still evident. Therefore, the aim of this article is to examine how industry bodies and supply chain partners address sustainability concerns in the European luxury sector and how they respond to consumer expectations. In an explanatory study, we have collected data about sustainable supply chain practices in 11 European luxury good companies, by interviewing and surveying 13 managers. In a first consumer study, we held interviews with French luxury consumers in Bordeaux about their sustainability expectations (N = 170). The results show that while the distribution of attention is dependent on the respective supply chain activities, luxury goods companies address sustainability concerns and aim to take responsibility for their activities. However, the emphasis is on the dimension of economic sustainability. A comparison with sustainability expectations of French luxury goods consumers suggests that business practices are not perfectly well aligned with these expectations. Consumers put more emphasis on social and environmental sustainability dimensions. On the other hand, business activities concerning waste reduction and raw material management rather well match consumer expectations.     

The impact of consumer health information on the demand for health services

This paper empirically examines whether consumers use health information, from non-physician information sources, as a substitute or complement for health services – namely for physician visits and emergency room (ER) visits. An indicator of patient trust in physicians is developed and used as a proxy for potential unobserved heterogeneity that may drive both consumers’ propensity to seek information and to use physician services. The results, after correcting for sample selection bias and controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, concur with the literature, that consumer health information increases the likelihood of visiting a physician as well as the frequency of visits on average. However, low-trust consumers tend to substitute self-care through consumer health information for physician services. Further, better-informed consumers make significantly fewer ER visits suggesting that information may be improving efficiency in the market.     

在金融危机下发放消费券促消费扩内需的博弈分析

众所周知,2008年注定对世界、对中国来说都是不平凡的一年。始于美国的由于次贷危机引发的金融危机至今都没见减缓的迹象。甚至有愈演愈烈之势,何时见底,没人知晓。同时,在全球经济一体化不断深入的进程中,中国岂能独善其身。自2008年下半年开始,我国的出口额明显下降,并在2009年上半年延续着继续下降的趋势。然而,在这全球经济增缓,甚至下降的环境下,我国为实现我们既定的长期目标,提出了2009年GDP的增长8％的目标,并分解落实到各地方政府。由此,各地方政府为了完成中央下达的增长目标,特别是在以出口为主的沿海城市,开始了一场浩浩荡荡的发行消费券,其中又以旅游券为甚的运作（以下统称消费券）,想以此来促消费,扩内需,保GDP增长。本文拟运用博弈理论首先分析这场运作产生的原因并分析其实效,同时剖析其产生的外在博弈条件,最后提出从实现国家总体目标的考虑方向提出了相应解决的措施建议。     

Strategic pricing of differentiated consumer durables in a dynamic duopoly: A numerical analysis

Under different modes of competitive pricing behavior, profit-maximizing price trajectories are derived for durable products in a dynamic duopoly. Open-loop co-operative and non-cooperative pricing behavior is analyzed within a comprehensive model where sales of differentiated products are described by interlocked diffusion processes with realistic demand characteristics. Because of analytic complexity, the optimal trajectories implied by the control and differential-game problems are derived numerically across an extensive set of plausible market scenarios. Manipulation of initial market conditions enables derivation of optimal competitive pricing as a function of timing of entry.